


Watching Him Fall

by JeffersonStarships



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Sirius Black, But also, He's so Slytherine it hurts, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Remus Lupin, POV Sirius Black, Slytherine Sirius, Soft Sirius Black, Teacher Remus Lupin, WIP, Werewolf Remus Lupin, first things first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25415404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeffersonStarships/pseuds/JeffersonStarships
Summary: I tried to write a summary and failed, here's an excerpt.His hand unconsciously rose to the most severe scar brandished across his chest and hooked over his shoulder. The twisted, braided texture of the new skin could be felt through his soft shirt, and it held a certain indentation on the skin over his heart that almost looked like a hand print of a man.A man who Remus could barely remember but had clung to. A stranger who really needed to never practice healing charms again because sweet Merlin, Remus would rather claw his own eyes out than have to relive that nearly torturous healing process that begged pain still, even through all the potions in his system to counter act it.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy, I love his fic so far. Hope you do too.

Sirius can barely breath from his hiding spot on the cold hard floor behind a teacher’s desk where he’s thrown himself to rest for just one moment. Angry fighting is echoing all around him from just outside the doors, but Sirius needs to breath before he passes out or dies. He has just taken out five very capable Death Eaters and had to heal the horrid gashes and wounds they had inflicted on him before he bled out, because with all this chaos and no real friends, he would most likely die before reliable help showed up.

It was messy, painful work, and Sirius’ body screamed louder at the healing of the wounds than it did when the things had been inflicted. He was master of dark traps and battle, trained to fight and destroy dark spells for the Ministry, not put things back together. But he had managed to stem the most severe bleeding nonetheless.

The closest of the noise outside the room dies in an instant and one of the two doors to the classroom smash open and the first thing- the only thing Sirius notices as the remotely male, but defiantly lanky figure staggers into the classroom and smashes into a desk before toppling to the stone floor- is blood. And based on the taxing, labored breathing, broken severely by the gusts of half sobs, the blood is mostly, if not only, his.

He left great smears across the inside of the door when he closed it behind him, and as Sirius crosses the room to fall to his knees beside the figure, the blood pours from angry wounds all over his upper body. It is only after Sirius turns the man to his back that he is absolutely sure that the figure is a friendly one, not donned in a sinister mask or dark robe, just a pale wool sweater, dark dress pants and blood- warm, wet blood.

With his wand already casting quick but messy healing charms on the severe gashes on the man’s arms, Sirius tries to catch the eye of the man choking on his pain as spit-thinned blood trickles from his clenched teeth, but his eyes are clamped shut as he wheezes for breath, huge tears cutting through the blood smeared across his temples from the wound swept across his brow. The gash is deep, but not immediately life threatening so Sirius focuses on the bleeding, boiling, blistering skin on the man’s chest, which seems to be sinking invisible fire lower and lower under the man’s skin, and is of far more concern.

“This isn’t from Fiend Fire,” Sirius growls to himself as he casts every counter-jinx he knows and some that he doesn’t think he should know but the knowledge of surges forward in his time of need. Thankfully, the man whimpers into a deathly scream as one of the counters catches against his skin and the fire extinguishes, but as the boiling on his skin and internal organs stops, the pain rushes forward. A wild, brutally painful scream rips itself from the man’s throat like an animal.

How did shit hit the fan this hard?

Sirius wants to weep. The feeling is familiar and almost feels like home, and so like always, he lets the Slytherin in him crawl forward on its knees, clamping back the tears even as the fear roars louder than ever. He smacks a hand over his mouth to try to keep himself from screaming out with the man just to release his fear and anxiety.

He casts a messy healing charm to the man’s chest, and by the hoarse, breathless turn of the scream and the clearing of the burns on his skin, the rushed nature of the spell is as painful as it was effective.

The man’s hands flail out unconsciously to grip on anything, anything at all. One hand catching a deep handful of Sirius’ hair, the other finding the leg of a desk, and he rips both closer to him. The table scoots closer but a few scant inches, but Sirius is wrenched onto the man’s naked shoulder and chest by the insistence of the powerful hand on his sensitive scalp, Sirius’s bare palm smacking down on the freshly healed, but still very bloody, skin to steady himself as he kneels precariously over him.

“Gods,” Sirius yelps, and tries to untangle the hand from his skull, but the man just pulls him closer, whimpering a hollow sound. Then, tucks his bloody face into Sirius’ shoulder to hack out a loud, angry sob.

With his wand hand still trying to untangle the fingers in his hair, Sirius moves the hand on the man’s chest to cup the back of the man’s head, “Sh sh sh,” Sirius tries to sooth, but he was always crap at this sort of thing, comforting is not a Black forte. The man curls his face into the crook of his neck and Sirius can feel tears streaming from his eyes on to Sirius’ neck, but the halls outside the room are growing loud again and Sirius hears determined footsteps get lost in much, much closer explosions of spell work. “We have to move,” Sirius tries to implore to the sobbing, shivering creature curling himself into Sirius.

It’s hell out there.

The school is on fire, and under siege. The Fucking _Dark Lord’s_ _Death Eater_ army running like madmen through the halls.

Grown men killing men, women, _children_ , for fun-for some half-cocked plan to rid the world of anyone not _pureblood_. As if there is anything pure about those sick fucks, anything pure about the people like Sirius- about even Sirius himself.

Merlin knows he’s not a saint, maybe not even a good man, but he knew something no one else did. Pureblood isn’t a gift, it doesn’t make you better, it makes you worse. It means some of his cousins have too many toes, and every last one of them are born with screws loose. 

When he was barely a year out of Hogwarts, Sirius’ Mother and brother sat down with all of their deranged monsters, who insist on being called Aunt or Uncle or Cousin and said he could be welcomed back into the family if he would join them in their league of evil villainy or whatever.

With vitriol, Sirius had refused, with everything he was, he _refused_. Then he begged hand and knee for his brother to turn away too.

They tried to kill him. His own Mother drew her wand and nearly hit her own flesh and blood with a powerful Killing curse, and his brother had only stood beside her and made no move protect his older brother- his failure of an older brother who rebelled all through school even when he aced every test or exam placed in front of him so he could be anything he wanted, anything but what his family asked of him.

His family hated him before he turned eleven and by seventeen he was nothing to them but a traitor- a _blood traitor._

Except for his brother, Sirius had hated them from the moment he was old enough to know that all he ever wanted was someone to love him for who he was and never even getting close. But now, Sirius had wanted to peel his own skin from his meat just so he wouldn’t see his mother’s face peppered across his cheek bones or his brothers pale gray eyes blinking through his dark lashes.

This was their war. This was their fault!

They were the ones running through the halls painting them red- burning everything with sickly green light.

How did the world get so broken?

Why did it feel like it’s been broken for forever?

The wall on the other side of the room takes the opportunity to detonate toward the only two figures in the room as if on cue.

Tables and chairs and bits of stone and the door as well as every innocuous thing near it became a projectile, and Sirius can’t move an inch to protect himself or the man under him with the sheer power the man is exuding to clutch Sirius’ close. Something feeling awful like a fractured chair smashes into Sirius’ back and he topples completely onto the injured man, the only thing pillowing the man’s skull from the collision with the hard floor is unfortunately the hand Sirius was using to cup his head, and the bones in his fingers crack painfully on impact.

“Fucking hell!” Sirius yells, but the hand tangled in his hair lets go at least.

His body moves without thought, as it has been doing all night. Footsteps approach and he as on his feet before he can even blink. And a loud and powerful, “Stupefy!” is out of his mouth before he consciously has the capacity to recognize the twisted, evil masks hidden just beneath the dark robes. In fact, the curse is strong enough to hit both threats _and_ send them hurtling back through the hole they left in the wall, incapacitated for the time being. He shoots Body-Binding curses and turn down to the man still laying at his feet.

The man’s face as mostly slack, but he blinked up distantly at Sirius with huge, red rimmed doe eyes framed in drying blood. The distant glinting off the pupils too clear as the man steadily wavers on the edge of his body going into shock, but they can’t stay here. They have to get the hell of here.

Sirius kneels down to the man and wraps one of his arms around Sirius’ neck. Distantly he is very aware that there is no way he can carry this man. He is at least half a foot taller and a bit broader around the shoulders than him and even if Sirius is not light weight, he recognizes he is not strong enough to carry a full-grown man, not after the night he has had at least.

“Up!” Sirius orders as he tries to stand with the man half draped over his shoulder, and it is only after the man starts to take an active, all be it sluggish, go at standing that the two of them hobble to their feet. “Merlin,” Sirius huffs and points them in the opposite direction as the wall with the hole in it to go out the other door. “Right foot left foot, okay?” Sirius tries to joke as he takes a few tentative steps and the man practically laying into his side tries to keep up.

“My right or yours?” the man breaths into Sirius’ hair, his voice soft as butterfly wings, but rough as nails, Sirius might have laughed at the joke if he wasn’t so frightened.

“That’s it,” Sirius says as they push out into the thankfully deserted hall, even if it rings with sharp sounds from both directions, “Just keep talking.”

“Never been much a talker,” the man hisses as Sirius just chooses a direction and starts that way, because honestly, either way could be certain death, but laying still and waiting for the trouble to crash into them is more certain death minus the benefit of action.

“Really?” Sirius asks thoughtlessly, his mind still reeling and worrying and blazing ahead of him, “I thought every man loved the sound of his own voice? Or was that just me?” A weak whimpering breaks across his eardrum and he thinks it might have been a chuckle at one point. “You got a name?” he asks just to distract himself from that sound.

“Remus,” the man whispers breathless.

Boisterous yelling wells up ahead and Sirius’ black, slightly knobbled, expensive looking wand raises out before him, “You got your wand?” A weaker hand draws out a pale wood, intricate yet modest wand.

They round a corner and are confronted by four masked men taking on three children in battle. One of the kids, a blond boy, catches sight of the adults and lets their guard down at exactly the wrong moment as a curse of blinding green blasts them off their feet.

The Slytherin in him snaps and Sirius sees red. He doesn’t come back to himself until he’s standing over the men who shot the curse, and he looks both Stupefied and Body-Bound even as Sirius’ fist smashes down angrily into his masked face again and again, not caring that his broken skin is leaving dents and blood in the metal object or that white hot tears are leaking from his eyes.

A soft hand falls on Sirius’ shoulder and his jerks back to look up at the blood-soaked figure of Remus standing shakily over him like me might collapse any moment. “I think that’s enough,” he says intensely, “Let’s keep going.”

How in bloody hell had Remus remained standing if Sirius wasn’t holding him up? Under the blood his face was white as a sheet, and he shook like every breath was a chore. Sirius rose and let the man fall against his side again, to take some of his weight.

As they move further down the hall, Sirius notes that while the fallen student is still sprawled across the floor motionless, the other two are gone. But something wild and feral screams in agony at the lost child, even if his name is unknown. Unbidden a broken, “ _why_?” ghosted over his mouth.

“ ‘Why’ doesn’t matter,” the taller man whispered, “It’s how we make it stop. It’s that we make sure it does stop.”

Dumbledore had said something similar to Sirius once, when he had come to Sirius to ask him to be a part of The Order. ‘It is not why, it is how. How will you change the world? Will you make it better or worse?’ The old man thought he was pulling Sirius from the dark side, little did he know that side never really wanted me anyway.

Sirius isn’t sure who is holding who up as the two men hobble down the hall where smoke of all disastrous colors wafts in through broken windows and billows from fiery pits cratered into the stone walls. Somehow Sirius’ fingers are twined with Remus’ and he leans just as hard into the man as he leans into him. A steady stream of tears roll from his eyes, and vaguely, he can feel the weight in his gut from the strain of magic, but his body is weighed heavier by all-consuming dread and fear.

“Where _are_ we going?” Remus manages but even if Sirius had any clue but forward, all talk was cut off as the wall beside them explodes and the force pushes both off their feet, into the air and through the already shattered window on the other side of the hall.

He doesn’t really remember the fall or the landing. But Sirius’ whole body sings with pain as he comes back to himself and _gasps_ for the air that had been knocked out of him.

His fingers are still tangled with that of a stranger and that is the only thing beside the pain that he can recognize.

Distantly, he can hear a small voice crying out. It might be himself, he did just fall three stories after being nearly blown up a few times, after spending Merlin knows how long going toe to toe with evil incarnate over and over, it would make sense.

The fingers linked with his twitch and he hardly feels himself turn to the man lain beside him, but between one blink and another, he only sees the smoke filled sky, then only blurry brown eyes that blink slowly, almost languidly at him. They are so close, as if Remus’ head is pillowed on Sirius’ shoulder, as if he only need to lean but an inch to kiss at the wound draped over the man’s forehead.

Only, he can’t look away from those calming eyes to check if he is on Sirius’ shoulder or not. Because at the same time the careful brown of them takes his breath away, they somehow ground him, becoming homing beacons to reality or dis-reality. Because the pain all around him lessens, ebbs away with every breath, until all he can feel is a coiling warmth creeping up his legs, stretching over his chest, caressing his face.

“Sirius Black,” he whispers, and he knows this stranger probably thinks he’s mad, stringing together two strange words that he will never know are Sirius’ name, because what kind of asshole names their child Sirius? What kind of asshole has that kind of name?

Remus’ brows draw together in expected confusion, before he whispers back, “Remus Lupin… Fancy meeting you here.” Sirius’ chest tightens because of course someone named Remus Lupin would recognize the shape of someone else’s strange name.

“Come here often, do you?” Sirius’ voice barely allows, and he knows that tingling in his brain and darkening edges around his vision is delirium.

Remus’ eyes smile faintly before his lids droop until they flutter closed and a sob rips through Sirius’ chest so he holds tighter to the fingers in his before the black edges of unconsciousness swarm over him too.


	2. Chapter 2

Life flickered back to Sirius and every inch of him hurt even below the tingling, heavy feeling of potions someone had presumably forced down his throat. He tried to move a hand to his face to wipe at his blurry eyes, but they felt like he had cinder blocks tied to his wrists he was so weak. A weak groan tumbles from his cotton mouth to protest feeling this terrible.

“Sh sh,” a soft female voice whispers through the medicated static crackling between Sirius’ ears, “Don’t try to move too much. If it wasn’t for all the potions I’ve been dumping into you, your atrocious healing charms probably would have killed you. I mean _really_ Sirius, what the hell is wrong with you? Didn’t you learn anything from your first-aid classes? Those scars are _never_ going to heal. They’re permanent, sweet Merlin-” Andromeda’s rant continued on, but Sirius let it wash over him unheard. His older cousin was clutching tightly to his hand as she worried over him.

He hadn’t been close to his cousin in his childhood. Sure, they ended up at every family function together with the rest of the Black family, but Sirius had been too rebellious and sulky, while Andromeda was nearly ten years older, she was too shy and soft spoken, to attempt actual human interaction. It was only after he joined The Order that he had ever spared her a second glance.

They weren’t close by any stretch of the imagination, but they had their moments where they realized that they were the only two Blacks who would have each other. They had always been outcasts, but now they were all the other had.

Sirius didn’t have a sister, but he figured she was the closest he would ever get to one, because considering how appalling his relationship with his brother was, this was probably par for the course anyway.

At least their unsure-footed, fumbling mess of interactions were never cruel or scathing and that was a step up in both their books.

Plus, after Andromeda got married, to her muggle husband, Theodore Tonks, she had her only child, Nymphadora. The little girl was… she was life, as pure and simple as it could be. Sirius could never count her as Black, she was all Tonks. The man had passed down kindness as if it could be imprinted in his genes.

Sirius watched Andromeda’s free hand rub at the dark circles under eyes as she ranted at him. Her thin fingers shaking and nearly as pale as the rest of her under the mess of tangled dirty blond hair. She looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

“How long was I out?” he interrupts as the question occurs to him, he words slurring across his tongue.

She blinks at him for a moment before she deciphers the meaning of Sirius’ mumbling, “I have no idea,” she admits. “They found you sometime after the fighting ended and you’ve been here for hours, but we have no idea how long you were out there before anyone found you. Gods!” she gasps, and her bottom lip quivered, “You were so still, I thought you were dead. Who knew Sirius could be so quiet? I thought for sure you could talk even while unconscious-“ Sirius squeezed her hand weakly and she closed her mouth, which his growing headache thanked her for.

“Did you get hurt?” Sirius asks earnestly, because she looked, frankly, like shit.

She shakes her head softly, “Healthy as a hippogriff, as long as we aren’t counting mental health.”

Sirius nearly snorts, but drawls out slowly, “We’re Blacks, we were doomed in that regard the moment we were born.”

“Guess so,” she pulls a tiny smile for the first time, even if it is as hollow as Sirius feels.

Moving gently, Sirius casts his eyes around himself for the first time. He is lain on a cot in the corner of a cramped living room. There is another occupied cot across the tiny room and the face of the man lain there is unfamiliar. So, he looks to the well-worn sofa, which is has a thrown back blanket and rumpled pillow as if it had been recently been slept on. The warm light filtering in through the window glinted dully off the well cared for but aging furniture that somehow complemented the kick-knacks cluttering over the fireplace and all the shelves. It felt homely and like everything that was brought into the space was loved, so it was not a pureblood home. “Where are we, Dromeda?”

Andromeda glanced over shoulder at the home behind her. “ My house? You’ve been here loads, Sirius.”

“Oh,” Sirius mumbles groggily, and glancing around again at the pureblood home that was anything but. Maybe that was a perk of falling for a Muggle born wizard, your home got to look like love happened there. Vaguely his surroundings start edging out from his memories, but the potions are still too strong to make sense of them.

“Nymphadora and Ted are around here somewhere,” Andromeda whispers soothingly.

A very pregnant red head walked out of the kitchen to perch herself on the cot beside the man lain there. “Who’s that?”

“Lily Evans,” she informs him, “Her husband needed some looking after such as you did after those _Death Eaters_ infiltrated the school.”

“What-“ Sirius felt his heart sink, he almost couldn’t ask. “Did they take the school?”

“No,” She answers in a rush, quickly soothing Sirius before he worries too fully, “But we couldn’t keep all the injured there after we fought off all those who we didn’t incapacitate. The castle-“ she shivered, “It was a mad house, a disaster. We moved the injured as soon as we could.”

Dread welled in Sirius and he wanted to cry. “He’s not dead,” he choked.

Andromeda sighed softly and stares down at him, “The Dark Lord lives,” she whispers with pained mourning and Sirius feels the hot tears break the crest of his lids.

“Fuck.”

“Hush now, Siri,” Andromeda coos softly as he brushes back his dark hair, “Hush now, Cousin. You should sleep. You need to rest.”

Sirius closes his eyes, “You should sleep too, Cousin.” He tells her, “You look like hell.”

“Well,” she huffs, “just be glad I don’t have a mirror to show you _your_ face.”

Sirius tightens his fingers into his cousin’s, remembering brown eyes framed in blood. A memory lost in a sea of screaming that pulls him into sleep.

Hours later, Alastor Moody’s gruff voice cuts through the fog of Sirius’ mind and as he squints through the murky feeling in his eyes, Moody is standing over his prone form almost disapprovingly, as he speaks softly with Andromeda. The man looks huge from this angle and Sirius feels his Slytherin side roiling in discomfort at the feeling of subjugation over the authority towering over him.

“Sit, Mad-eye” he orders even before he is even fully awake.

Ignoring him, Moody just says, “You look like shit.”

Sirius hisses, “I don’t like you.” And tries to sit up but his body screams that he shouldn’t, so he doesn’t.

“You’re taking a week off, Black,” Moody orders. “I see you in the office before then, I break your leg.”

Sirius notices the room around them is rather dark, it must be late. “Which leg?” Sirius asks out of obligation to tease his Auror trainer and now, temporary partner.

Moody sighs, “I change my decision to breaking both your legs.”

Sirius chuckles, as he covers his eyes for some sort of comfort, “I’d like to see you try.”

Moody huffs, “You forget I taught you everything you know.”

“It’s quite adorable you think that’s true.” Sirius can practically feel Moody’s furious disapproval, and haughty self-righteousness.

“I’ll see you in a week,” He growls and Disapperates away with a ‘pop.’

Andromeda is there the next second to worry over him, “I don’t know how he puts up with you.” She breaths.

“If he can’t handle me, he doesn’t deserve his title,” Sirius tries to blink back his tiredness.

He is met with a strange silence, but he’s so tired he can’t decipher it. It can’t truly be as affectionate as it feels.

“Go back to sleep, Cousin,” she whispers kindly, and it sounds like a wonderful idea, so Sirius does.

The next time Sirius awakens it is still light out, but Andromeda is not by his side. There is a buzzing of potions, as well as the lingering of pain, still strumming through him, but he fights it to sit up. His blanket falls away to reveal the stark, white scar gouged into the tanned flesh of his stomach that looks like he was ripped open by an animal and left the wounds to heal without magic or any medical attention. Sirius really shouldn’t have had a hand at practicing healing charms, but at least he isn’t dead.

Smaller, cleaner scars that had been more superficial wounds compared to the major one Sirius had had to close, are nearly lost in the white mess he had given himself, because the healer had been much more skilled than he.

He pushes away the blanket to catch sigh of his legs and the wound he had healed that had cut from his knee to hip, or at least what of it he can see around his shorts. It looked maybe a little worse than the first even if at the time it had been the more superficial wound.

He turned away from it to sweep his eyes around the room to keep himself from being sick.

That little voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded a lot like his vile Mother, spat, ‘You disgust me! Look what you did to yourself. You ruined yourself.’ Sirius had always been a bit vain. He knew he was a beautiful man, but now… Well, maybe his ugly insides matched more with his outside now.

Unexpectedly, he catches sight of bright, sky-blue hair and startlingly familiar silver eyes peeking over the back of the couch occupied by a sleeping woman with long, red hair. Nymphadora is projecting Sirius’ own eye color at him, but all it does was remind him of his brother, because they were shaped into sad, scared things and it made his heart ache.

“Hey little one,” he calls out softly to her, “You gonna give Uncle Sirius a hug?” He opens his arms weakly for her in invitation.

Her hair pales a bit closer to dull blue, but she sprints out from behind the couch to fall into his arms, with a wet sob, “I thought you’d never wake up!” she cries.

The little girl is light in his arms, but his skin about his stomach still throbs at the weight of her, even if he can’t bring himself to tear her away. He wraps his arms around her tiny form and rests his chin of her ten-year-old head. “Never getting rid of me that easy, Pipsqueak.”

“You were crying in your sleep,” her tiny, wounded voice informs him from his shoulder, her hair dulling to a light gray.

He remembers the nightmares easily but pushes the thought of them away as he brushes a hand over her shoulder, “I was dreaming of your mothers cooking,” he whispers playfully.

The little girl giggles softly before pulling away to wipe at her wet cheeks, her hair a bashful light pink. Her eyes were still silver, but she smiles softly as she watches his face. “You’re going to be okay, right?”

“I’ll be fit as a fiddle in no time,” Sirius shrugs.

“Good,” but she blinks back tears again.

“Could you ask your mother for some proper pants for me,” Sirius asks to distract her, “I’ll catch a cold with all this leg showing.”

She glances down at his nearly bare legs and naked chest, seeming to think he might be right, she nods “Okay,” with a grim look of determination before sprinting from the room and down the hall, her hair a sea of reds.

With a grunt of pain and a flailed hand to the wall for support, Sirius managed to climb to his feet.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you, mate,” a man grumbles from the other side of the room, and when Sirius glances over he sees it is the man from earlier who had been sleeping on the other cot, he is now standing, drinking a cup of what smells like coffee as he leans casually against a doorframe.

“You couldn’t have kept me in that cot for all the money in the world,” Sirius mumbles because _Gods!_ he needs to stand, to put his mind on something else, give it a place to go. Even if it is to keep him from passing out again.

“Lily might fight you back into it when she wakes,” the man snorts, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You want some coffee?”

“Merlin, _yes_ ,” Sirius hissed as he pushed off the wall to take his whole weight on his feet and move toward the room the other man had disappeared into.

By some work of god, Sirius walked into the kitchen, without fainting, but he had to sink into a chair at the table as his vision darkened around the edges from a medicated, heavy fatigue. A black cup of coffee was set down before him and Sirius didn’t bother with cream or sugar. “Name’s Potter,” the man offered.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Sirius felt his brain sputtering around, connecting bits a pieces of a life- his life- that he couldn’t quite reach right now. It was almost as familiar as the name from last night. Lily. He had recognized that name instantly, Severus had droned on and on about the girl to him for _years_ in Hogwarts.

Honestly, the man was obsessed with the woman, she was probably the only thing that kept the bastard from joining the Death Eaters, but she was dating someone. There was a reason Severus hadn’t married the Gryffindor girl already…

“Ah,” Sirius nods as he takes a scalding sip of his beverage. “James Potter, yeah? You and Evens hitched yet? Or you waiting around for permission or something? Because I don’t think Severus is ever going to let go as easily as you had hoped.”

Now as Sirius looked up at the wild, black hair and a face that should have been instantly recognizable, he remembered him from school. Merlin, he was really messed up if he couldn’t recognize James Potter, wonder-boy extraordinaire. They had been in the SAME year for heaven’s sake! Different houses, but the same year.

Plus, Sirius has seen the man and his gorgeous red-haired woman in Order safehouses from time to time for meetings and the like. They’d never spoken more than passing greetings, but Sirius recognized the face.

“Severus will have to pry my wife from my cold death hands,” Potter smirks without any bite, as if he had accepted Severus’ place in his life. Sirius doesn’t want to know at the same time he wants to know: how did Severus fit into Potter’s and Evan’s life when he was so desperately in love the woman? Luckily, Potter cuts him off before he can ask.

“Sirius, right?” Potter asks uncertainly. Sirius shrugs and takes another scalding sip of coffee. “Wait,” Potter puts down his cup and barks out a laugh, “You were the one who jinxed all the stairs in the castle into ramps fourth year!”

Sirius couldn’t help but laugh maniacally, his head falling back and his mind absolutely spinning with a wave of nostalgia, “Merlin, if only you could prove it,” Sirius laughs.

“I rode my broom up to the astrology tower and slid all the way down on a shield I took off one of the suits of armor!” he smiles wide, a chuckle weaving into his words, “I don’t think I’ve ever puked so much in my whole life.”

“You got sick?” Sirius snorted loudly.

“Mate, that tower is like sixty stories, and all in a complete circle! I’m lucky I wasn’t ripped apart by the centripetal force!”

The two very grown men snorted and chuckled like hyaenas for far too long, only stopping when a every grumpy, every pregnant looking Lily Evans pads in the room with furious eyes on James as she waddles over to the kettle on the stove to fill it at the sink. “Sorry,” James cringes guiltily.

She turns her eyes to Sirius and the anger is replaced with concern as she looks at the white mess of scars on his skin, “How you feeling, dear?”

Self-consciously, Sirius’ arms move to hug over the scars, hiding them from view. “Like I fell off the top of a mediaeval castle onto a bed of over-medication and glass.”

James snorts again, “ _Didn’t_ you fall from a window?”

Actually, he had been exploded out a window and he opened his mouth to correct the man when Sirius remembers brown blinking eyes staring up at him and suddenly he can’t breathe.

For one very long instant Sirius feels the floor give out from under him, and then he is just standing over himself as he sits in the kitchen. His fingers shaking against the glass cup in his hands and all the air sucks out of the room.

Belatedly, he realizes he’s terrified, that that strumming medicated feeling has burned away and all there is left is the searing white hot fear of running through the halls for his life, fighting monsters disguised as wizards, and holding tight to a man he had only just met, hoping not to die- at least not yet- just a little longer- a little while longer.

No one is coming to save them. Dumbledore is trying to kill a monster he had a hand in creating, he’s not coming.

They have to run- Run!

“Sirius,” Andromeda’s voice cuts through the fear, and he has to pry his eyes open to find her face. She looks terrified and he focuses on her left eye because that’s what you do to feel safe. You find someone’s eyes. You ground yourself to them.

But even after staring into her hazel colored eye for too long, he doesn’t feel the world become clearer until her kind hand brushes back his black hair from his forehead.

Finally- finally- a gasp of air punches into his lungs. And the only name for the sound that leaves his mouth on the exhale is a whimper.

“Sh sh,” she tries. “You’re safe, you’re okay.” But she doesn’t move closer or further away. Standing just within arm’s reach, her fingers stroking back his hair. Vaguely he is reminded of his father. Of his hand ruffling curls as the man walks passed, a simple show of affection given lightly and in passing.

Sirius doesn’t even know if the memory is a true one, his father died when he was three, but somehow the memory paired with the gentle strokes of his cousin’s fingers, Sirius finds his way back from the panic.

He takes a few tentative inhale and exhales before he feels safe enough to skirt his eyes over the room. Potter and Evans are perched just over Andromeda’s shoulder against the counter by the stove, and he almost gasps at the look if understanding on all three of their faces. Ted is in the doorway dressed for the work day in his Ministry robes with a pair of sleep pants in his hand and Nymphadora is carefully edging forward to take his hand with honest grey eyes and bright blue hair again.

“Let’s get you back to bed,” Andromeda says softly as Nymphadora finally takes his hand softly, her little fingers just as sweaty as Sirius’, “I don’t even know how you got in here with all that potion in you.” She shoots an accusatory eye at Potter as she hooks her hands under one of Sirius’ biceps.

“It wasn’t me!” Potter blinks, “He walked in here of his own power and volition!”

“No,” he shakes her hold away, keeping tight to Nymphadora who crowds him with a hug around his arm, “I walked I here all on my own. If you want to coddle, get me books.”

“W- what?” she sputters, “Siri, you were nearly dead a day ago, you need rest.”

“Books,” he articulates fiercely, “If I lay down in that bed one more moment, I can’t be held accountable form my actions when I snap-“

“You need-“

“I _need_ books, as many dark arts as you can get your hands on.”

"Sirius,” she snaps.

“I refuse to be bedridden!” Sirius shouts back, Slytherin pride shooting through him before he can stop himself, making Nymphadora flinch beside him.

He has seen his mother bedridden for most of his life. She had always been frail, and the older she got- the sicker she got- the crueler her words became. On some level he understood, she was a very smart woman, a woman of action, and being bedridden had taken a huge part of her soul away. She became bitter and cold as retaliation at the world. Sirius was a man of action, much like her. He refused to follow her footsteps.

“We have a very evil man hellbent on apocalypse to take down,” Sirius says calmly, squeezing the little hand curled him his as apology for scaring her, “I think reading a few books is at least in order, don’t you?”

Sighing like she just couldn’t believe him, Andromeda stood straight and rolled her eyes, “You are just the most overdramatic man I have ever met. Honestly,” she huffs, “You really are a Black.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for taking so long to update, life has been... life? idk. I hope you enjoy.

For the second time since being carried from Hogwarts, Remus Lupin awoke in Molly Weasley’s enchanted tent, sprawled over a bunkbed that groaned in protest every time he moved. The wind hounded on the tent, it was propped on the school grounds just outside the castle’s reach, but it felt like all the wind of the world rolled off the castle to fall onto the tiny tent in great, resounding waves of noise.

He was grateful that no one was here to greet him this time he roused, Molly had a tendency to over fuss and Arthur tended to frighten easy at the sight of, well Remus in general, but blood and wounds in particular. Both of which Remus was quite familiar.

The newest, most tender scars had been a shock to Remus, though they were lost in a sea of nasty scars anyway. Ripping yourself to shreds every full moon isn’t exactly conducive to healthy, gorgeous skin. In the end, Remus saw them for what they were, proof he was alive, hope he would continue to be.

His hand unconsciously rose to the most severe scar brandished across his chest and hooked over his shoulder. The twisted, braided texture of the new skin could be felt through his soft shirt, and it held a certain indentation on the skin over his heart that almost looked like a handprint of a man.

A man who Remus could barely remember but had clung to. A stranger who really needed to never practice healing charms again because sweet Merlin, Remus would rather claw his own eyes out than have to relive that nearly torturous healing process that begged pain still, even through all the potions in his system to counter act it.

Molly walks in then, “Oh good, you’re awake,” she smiles and strides over with her wand out but puts it away as she starts throwing back his blankets and tugging him from bed, “Up and at ‘em, Remi Dear. Then we’re packing up and on the move in ten. Places to go, bastards to thwart.”

Well, looks like the time for fussing has ended at least.

“Of course,” he chuckles and takes to his still unsteady, but getting stronger, feet. “Any idea yet where Dumbledore is off to yet?”

“Last I heard he was resting up, no idea where, but at least he is alive, yes?” she walked over to the chest at the foot of the bed and threw a pair of pants and a sweater at him, then moved to sit on the closed lid as Remus pulled on the articles. Remus tried to ignore her, she had a _look_ on her face that spoke nothing but trouble.

He slipped into his pants and tried not to sigh about the inadequate length. He hadn’t had much luck borrowing clothes that fit properly since he everything in his room back at Hogwarts had been torched. All his books, his clothes, his mother and father’s wedding rings that he kept on his nightstand. Everything. Only the few things he kept in his office had survived.

He was a teacher at Hogwarts, one of the youngest ever to work there. ‘Was’ being an operative word here. The school was all but closed, only the truly desperate staying back. No one had any clue how the Death Eaters had gotten into the school for the surprise attack that though it set off the alarms, couldn’t be traced. It was likely they could do it again.

At the start of the attack, most of the students had been escorted out of the castle through the flue networks, but then Voldemort was there, and Dumbledore had gone to keep him back as the children got out. All the available members of The Order of the Phenix and every teacher had stayed to protect the students who had not been herded in the right direction and to keep Hogwarts from falling to the Dark Lord.

Remus had not been a part of the Order, but he had awoken in his old school mate’s, read: Molly’s, tent and she had offered him both a more homey place to sleep until things settled and to bring him into the fold because while she and her husband where not technically in the Order, Molly’s younger brothers were.

He really didn’t have much to lose anymore. Being a teacher was his life. His family was gone, and all his friends from school were, well, Molly Weasley and sometimes her brother.

She had been in her sixth year when he had only been a first year. She was an anchor, the only friend from school that had kept up with him when he had withdrawn in his fourth year after tiring of trying to fake being normal (You can only evade Hufflepuffs for so long. The lot of them all are so _understanding_ and wanted to talk about _feelings_ ).

Remus manages not to die or get pulled into a talk with Molly as he stumbles out into of the tent, curling into his borrowed sweater to fight the chill before reaching for his wand- well, not _his_ wand, but the wand of a strange man Remus didn’t even know- to cast himself a warming charm.

Waiting for Arthur to pack up the tent, he turns down to the polished, black thing in his fingers. It’s a bit longer than his wand, 11 inches, and more sturdy with ebony wood. It is fairly straight except near the handle where several knots in the wood flare slightly.

It had been a surprise to find the wand with his few things yesterday, and even more surprised to find the wand didn’t fight him too harshly. From what Remus had read, ebony wands tended to be drawn to outliers, which Remus has always been, but it was also drawn to powerful wizards, which Remus doubts he is.

It gave the most trouble doing small things like heating cups of cooled tea or fetching books from across the room. He had to concentrate or risk the wand boiling his tea to steam or ripping a whole shelf from the wall which drained the magic straight out of Remus’ gut painfully, but his Patronus came as glitchy as it always had and the few jinxes and counter curses he had attempted from his bed had been no different than usual if he accounted for the extra length on the thing.

Molly rests a hand on his elbow as Arthur finishes up his packing, her brown eyes searching kindly, but persistent. “Feeling alright?”

He turns up to her, “You were the one who found me after…” his mouth dries, and Remus has to settle on, “You found me after.”

She catches his meaning turning to glance at Arthur as he starts casting spells to remove the damage from setting up the tent and small campfire in the grass and surrounding area. “I did.”

Remus looks down at the bit of wood still tangled in his fingers, “Do you think he has mine?”

“Your wand?” she shrugs but tightens her fingers on his arm, “I hope so. Poor thing still needs something to protect himself.”

Remus nods and slips the wand into his pocket. He can’t help but kind of miss _his_ little bit of wood.

“Did you ever catch his name?” she asks honestly. He hadn’t told her much about that day and she hadn’t pressed, but she had found him with his face buried in the man’s chest, nearly dead. And even if she wasn’t one of the smartest women in earth, she need only have known Remus for longer than a week to know that he did _not_ like to be touched. The wolf in him was a nervous, angry thing, but he had unconsciously buried himself into a near stranger and she understood, as Remus knew, that somehow the man had earned Remus’, as well as the wolf’s, trust and such a thing is hard to do when you’re fighting for your life, or maybe it isn’t. Remus has had little experience in that field.

“Sirius Black, I think,” he answered curtly, trying not to smile at the appropriate title of the man. Hair as black as night, and _seriously_ handsome.

“You’re terrible,” she snorted reading his train of thought like a book.

Arthur walks over then, “All packed, and cleaned. Ready when you are.”

“We headed to The Burrow?” Remus asks.

“Yes. You’re going to Side Along with me, okay? No risking you Splinching when you still have all those potions in you. I honestly have no clue how you are even standing here, you should be unconscious!”

Well, fussing is less over than previously thought.

“Molly,” Arthur smiles fondly, and she huffs at him.

“Fine, fine, I’m done anyway. Let’s just go.”

The Apparition nearly lays Remus out instantly. Between the increases nauseous feeling of the Side Along, the pain still winding out of his skin and the powerful potions, not even the wolf’s increased resistance can hold him up straight. If not for Arthur’s quick reflexes, Remus would have been jelly in the dirt just outside Molly and his wonderful cottage, but the two only manage to carry him as far as the threshold before he is unconscious.


End file.
